Apparently it’s better to diet with a friend and, while this probably boosts motivation in some people, there's always a chance she could turn into a massive twat. Case in point: me and my best mate started losing weight together and it ended with a smoothie glass being thrown at a wall. This one happened to be plastic, so bounced amusingly, but neither of us laughed because of all the shouting. And she’d got a bit of smoothie on my wall, which pissed me off loads.
It started during our waitressing phase, which involved eating loaves of bread and bowls of chips (plus some waitressing). A few months in and she couldn’t do up her jeans, while my boobs appeared to have multiplied into four – the sad product of a suddenly ill-fitting bra. I didn’t have enough money to buy new ones, she kept emailing me screenshots of herself from 2011, so we decided to stop moaning and download the calorie-counting app MyFitnessPal like a pair of 21st-century adults.
In the beginning, there was nothing but the healthy competition on which our friendship had always been predicated. At uni, I’d leave my essay until the night before the deadline; she’d write it with two hours to go. She’d snog one guy; I’d snog two. She floored me at most board games (we have a wild time, guys) and I’d consistently drink her under the table (see?). Why not utilise this same sense of competition on our arses and multi-boobs?
At first, there were weekly text flurries: 'OK I want Ben and Jerry’s so hard.' Then: 'I’m in the frozen food section. Help.' Then: 'It’s OK just bought some frozen peas (?!) AND RELAX.' And finally: 'Just ate pot of Ben and Jerry's and a bag of peas. Can’t move.' It was fun, comparing progress and egging each other on.
I didn’t notice the text-flurries had become one-sided until I complimented her one night on her new-found ability to nail a crop top and she snapped: 'Well if you didn’t eat cheesecake at 3am you’d have lost some weight too.' I spent the rest of the night disorientated, but put it down to the fact I’d had some gin after weeks of salad and was probably battered. Still, I stopped sending her silly texts after that.
By the time she offered me her 'fat clothes' because they no longer fitted, I was a walking ball of Pissed Off.
A week later, when a bunch of us went to the cinema, someone asked how she’d lost the weight and she explained about MyFitnessPal – adding how she was 'taking it a bit more seriously than Stevie' before laughing in this weird tinkly way. Like a shit windchime.
Alright, so I’d just bought popcorn, but was still only two pounds away from my goal weight. When I told her this, she eyed the popcorn and said 'Oh yeah, I see that' before relaying an old text conversation we'd had, involving me, a family pack of Minstrels, and one text message sent to her for every individual Minstrel I consumed. It was a joke, but out of context I looked like a mad woman with Binge Eating Disorder and boundary issues.
By the time she offered me her 'fat clothes' because they no longer fitted, I was a walking ball of Pissed Off. All her jokes were suddenly based on weight comparison – like when I saved up and bought some leather trousers and she made a comment about how daring I was considering I don’t have a thigh gap, like her.
The tone pissed me off (and this windchime laugh had become a bit of a thing) so I made a stupid joke about her bandy legs, and she didn't speak to me for the remainder of the day. This was weird: her legs had always been a bit of a joke between us. We once managed to slot four dictionaries between them. (Hey, remember dictionaries?! Anyway.)
I wish, in hindsight, I’d sat her down and had a chat. Instead I, maturely, lost my shit and put a thousand calories worth of my housemate’s protein powder in a smoothie, watched her drink it then gave her the necessary nutritional information so she could update her MyFitnessPal profile. Obviously I'd got this from Mean Girls.
Her reaction was pretty Regina-like; she threw her glass at the wall (see opening paragraph) and called me mental, I went off on a rant about how shit she was now and how I’d probably lost my deposit because there was smoothie on the wall. She told me I was pissed off because she was thin, then I did a bit of sobbing on the in-breath while saying 'you’re mean to me all the time' in a dramatic tremulous voice that throbbed with emotion and, in retrospect, sounded like a dying seal. After this, we talked and cried a lot.
If we’d have talked earlier, I would have realised how simple the whole thing was: being hungry made us both angry. She snapped at me at a party and, instead of telling her to calm the fuck down, like normal, I'd reacted all mopey and injured because I was also totally spaced out with hunger pangs. Also, she was better at losing weight than me, and admitted that she'd gloated a little more than necessary but hey, remember what she'd said about being hungry? I said 'I'm sorry for not talking to you about it' and she said 'I'm sorry for offering you my fat clothes and reading out texts that made you appear mental.'
We’re pretty much back to normal now – she’s no longer a twat, we both deleted MyFitnessPal and the moral of the story is to talk to your friend if she starts acting like an arsehole while on a low calorie diet. She's probably hungry. If you're doing the diet too, then you're probably being an arsehole too.
Just join a gym or go for a run or something yeah?
Follow Stevie on Twitter @5tevieM
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.